He stood outside the hotel, looking at his reflection in the window. He kept pushing his cowlick back down. God, or whoever created this unjust universe, had only permitted three strains of hair for the front of his head, and one of them always refused to align with the others.

She said they would meet at eight. While he was the one to initiate it, she was the one to choose the place and the time. He was just happy to be there. Besides, he was always adaptable, never having to check a schedule. 

He looked at his phone and saw that he had fifteen minutes to kill. Should he sit inside for fifteen minutes or text her that he was there early? Overcome with the burden of this decision, he did neither. 

“When did it get so cold, all of a sudden?” he wondered, now suddenly aware of the conditions he was in. He could feel each little movement of wind go through his naked, ungloved hands; leaving a residual kiss of frost on his bones as they went.

At least it wasn’t raining anymore, although the little impressions that the rain left on the just-barely oversized topcoat that his dad had unknowingly lent him kept the memory of ten minutes ago alive.

He remembered a factoid: somebody who had worked on the film Barry Lyndon had said that shooting in Ireland was difficult because Ireland is in the Gulf Stream and, therefore, the weather changes unexpectedly. For no discernible reason, he tended to remember things like that. He had never even seen Barry Lyndon. 

He looked down at his body and saw stains on his shirt and jeans that hitherto hadn’t existed. He licked his thumb and began rubbing the offending spots but to no avail. 

He worried about the cold sore that his mother assured him wasn’t noticeable before he had left the house and that the homeless man around the corner from the hotel, from whom he had gotten a second opinion, had conferred couldn’t be seen. Using his two index fingers, he widened the side of his lip where the sore was and stared at it for twenty seconds straight. Truth be told, he couldn’t see it either, but he felt it. He knew it was there.

His stomach cramped. Should he cancel and go home? He had never done this before. He had barely even spoken to a woman before. Cancelling seemed like the right decision; so much so that his stomach stopped aching when his brain momentarily convinced it into believing this was to be his course of action. He thought of the pain and embarrassment he could spare, and then he thought of the money he could save. He was between jobs, and he couldn’t afford to be needlessly extravagant. 

He decided that he had gotten this far, so he may as well go through with it. He looked at his phone again and it read 19:55. He took a deep breath, which seemed to ease his stomachache and, almost like his nervous system entered pilot mode, he walked to the front of the hotel. He went to the ATM by the hotel’s entrance and took out exactly €150 and chose the “Continue without receipt” option while completing the transaction. 

This was to be his spending cap for the night. The feeling of the three €50 notes in his hand surprisingly eased him. He felt a sense of confidence that this cash was tangible evidence of him going outside of his comfort zone, with an accompanying pang of pre-emptive regret at the monetary hit that he knew he would feel when it was no longer in his hand. Not only was this night out costing him the €150, but the additional bus fare in and out of town and the 50c that he had felt obligated to give the homeless man in exchange for his medical opinion. All of this money he was burning just to satiate his selfish gene’s desire to replicate. His hatred for his own body now went beyond just aesthetics. 

Walking into the lobby, it seemed grander and more elegant than the exterior had led him to believe it would be. Despite having spent the last ten minutes looking at his reflection, he couldn’t even remember how he looked after taking it all in. All he could think of were the stains and the cold sore and how much more apparent they must be under this synthetic lighting.

“Good evening, sir,” a man in a suit said to him, causing him to jerk suddenly out of his awe. The man in the suit appeared a bit startled by this reaction but professionally continued with his obligated civility. “Can I help you with anything?”

“No,” he replied without complete conviction through a repeated forced smile that would only stay on his face for a millisecond at a time. “I’m fine.”

The man in the suit gave him an understanding and courteous smile and a nod, then walked away.

His stomach rumbled again. “Oh, God,” he thought. He had to go to the toilet. Public toilets were not exactly within his comfort zone, but then again none of the events of this night was. Reluctant but without options, he entered the men’s room. 

The restroom smelled like cinnamon and eucalyptus and was equally as neat and pristine as the lobby. Classical music played. Was it Mozart? Beethoven? Bach? None of the above? He had no idea. They all sounded the same to him, but he liked it when he heard it. 

After waiting for the only other gentleman present to leave, he entered a cubicle and sat on the lukewarm toilet seat; all too aware of the little dins outside of his stall. He tried to distract himself. 

He took out his phone and began looking at the photos of her from the website. He took in a breath and closed his eyes. As the sound of impact from the toilet water occurred, a notification from his phone went off and startled him. It was a text from her.

“Are you still coming?” it read.

“I’m here now,” he texted back. “Where will I meet you?”

“Room 308,” she replied. “Knock twice so I know it’s you.”